Nightmare's Fairy Tale: A Young Refugee's Home Fronts, 1938-1948

By Gerd Korman

Book Overview

Fleeing the Nazis in the months before World War II, the Korman family scattered from a Polish refugee camp with the hope of reuniting in America. The father sailed to Cuba on the ill-fated St. Louis; the mother left for the United States after sending her two sons on a Kindertransport. One of the sons was Gerd Korman, whose memoir follows his own path--from the family's deportation from Hamburg, through his time with an Anglican family in rural England, to the family's reunited life in New York City. His memoir plumbs the depths of twentieth-century history to rescue the remarkable life story of one of its survivors.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0299210804
• ISBN13: 9780299210809
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Length: 198 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Fleeing the Nazis

Korman, Gerd. "Nightmare's Fairy Tale: A Young Refugee's Home Fronts", University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. Fleeing the Nazis Amos Lassen and Literary Pride University of Wisconsin Press has been dong some exciting publishing in the field of Holocaust Studies and now we are going to have the exhibit from the national Holocaust Museum here in Little Rock, its important to make ourselves familiar with some of the literature. "Nightmare's Fairy Tale" is the story of the Korman family who had been scattered from a Polish refugee camp but had hopes of reuniting in America. Unfortunately that did not happen. Father Korman fled to Cubs aboard the ill-fated St. Louis. Mother Korman left for the United States after sending her two sons, one of whom is the author, Gerd, to a Kindertransport. In his book, Korman tells us of his childhood years as a refugee in Europe after the war and then as an immigrant to America. Analyzing history, he uses his own personal experience to look at the American-Jewish immigrant community and how growing up in several countries influenced both him and others. Eventually reunited with his parents, his story is one of success while others were not so lucky. His teenage years as a wanderer were the trauma that shaped his identity. Here in America, he became an American Jew anxious to embrace his new home but his accent often betrayed him. Yet he is eager to tell the story of how he was defined by history. The book is extremely moving and the trial of a family as seen through the eyes of a twelve year old boy is heartbreaking. But he also sees the historical importance of the Holocaust and acknowledges the connections he has made by attempting to understand it. This is not just a memoir but a story that compels you to keep reading as Korman gives his observations on memory and identity. As a personal narrative it is an important contribution to the field of Holocaust studies which is narrowing as the survivors are beginning to die off. It is not easy to read books like this as it jars us to a state of reality about man's inhumanity to man. We MUST read these books so as to never forget the darkest period in the history of the world as painful as reading this is there is a reward in knowing that we are alive and determined not to let something like this happen again.

The personal and eye-opening story of a young man and his broken family's escape to the refuge of Am

Nightmare's Fairy Tale: A Young Refugee's Home Fronts by Gerd Korman (Professor Emeritus of American History at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations) is the personal and eye-opening story of a young man and his broken family's escape to the refuge of America only months before the beginning of the second world war. As a detailed auto-biographical account of Korman's childhood through a Kindertransport near Warsaw, deportation from Hamburg, a temporary stay with an Anglican family and the reunification of his family and Jewish homage in New York. Very highly recommended for its vivid depiction of unseen historical afflictions, Nightmare's Fairy Tale is an ideal addition for the reading lists of non-specialist general reading fans with an intrigue for historical, Judaic, and World War II memoirs.